Unpacking teachers' value beliefs about computational thinking and programming

Abstract

Many education policy strategy documents at the European Union level, as well as national strategies of various countries, recommend including computational thinking as a fundamental skill in curricula. The professional development of teachers should be supported to disseminate computational thinking in K12 education. Teachers’ value beliefs about computer science and programming should be first known when designing professional development programs. This study aims twofold. The first is to adapt the Teacher Beliefs about Coding and Computational Thinking (TBaCCT) Scale into Turkish. The second is to explore Turkish primary and secondary school teachers' value beliefs about computational thinking and programming. The study involved 417 teachers. Confirmatory factor analysis was used for the validity studies of the scale. Independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, and MANOVA analysis were used to examine whether the scores differed according to gender and subject, respectively. The findings show that the Turkish form of the TBaCCT Scale is valid and reliable. For programming self-efficacy and teaching programming efficacy, there is a significant difference between male and female teachers, computer science teachers and other subjects, and elementary mathematics, class and science teachers and other teachers. Teachers working in social sciences especially need professional development programs that will transform their beliefs and knowledge about computational thinking.

Keywords

• Computational thinking
• teacher
• teaching programming
• self-efficacy
• value beliefs

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